Monday, August 20, 2007

Ha! Kidding! But man, after Yarnival (thank you, Yarnival-goers, for visiting and saying happy things!) and the Stitch Diva newsletter (how rock star is that awesome collage???), we're bathing in affirmations - which is great, because we've had a rather not-affirming bit of news, and going into that with a good cushion of happy thoughts was really wonderful. You have no idea how much it helped - so thank you!

I'll get to the not-affirming stuff towards the end, but for now, good stuff! The weekend was veddy veddy busy, and wonderfully productive:

"Mean Girls" handspun. My original idea was to do a "Train Wreck" series, and this one was going to be Lindsay (there would also be a Paris and Britney) but it just seemed too mean to pick on someone having such a hard time with life. So I dubbed it after one of my favourite Lohan movies instead. (Can I help it if I love the little mess??) This is a superwash merino single, about 140 yards, spun from a Spunky Eclectic roving (loved it!!) I'll hope it sells, but if it doesn't, I'll be happy to give it a loving home.

"Joker" handspun, two-ply bulky BFL wool, about 100 yards. I love this one too - I spun and spun and spun and only when I was nearly finished with the plying did I finally figure out what the colours reminded me of - the Joker! (Carrie of Funky Carolina dyed the roving and dubbed it "Grape Leaves", which also works beautifully for it, if you're the classy sort who doesn't immediately relate colours to movies, comic books, and food. Hi.)

"London & France" handspun two-ply striping superwash merino. The only thing less classy than movies, comic books, and food? References to children's taunts relating to underpants. Yep - Adam of Yarn Nerd dyed this gorgeous roving, gave it an also-classy name "Tour de France" and all I could think was "I see London, I see France, I see Lance's underpants." I only changed the skein name from "Lance's Underpants" to "London and France" by necessity - Etsy doesn't allow apostrophes in listings. :-) I loved spinning this - I broke it into colour sections and made sure they matched up, so the yarn is Noro-esque and stripey. (Sold already, yay happy!) I have one more Adam roving, but I really don't think that one will make it into the shop. *mine!*

I ALSO finished a sock - it's been on the needles forever, but I needed the needles back, so rather than just yank them out like I usually do, I finished the sock. This is the Friday Harbour pattern from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road, and the yarn is Socks that Rock in Fire on the Mountain. I love all the colours and I'm thrilled that they didn't pool horrendously...it may have come out a little on the garish side, but fun nonetheless.

And thanks to my wonderful pal, I had a project bag that matched my project! (Don't think that didn't tickle me to death.) The sock is a hair big on me, but fits Travis perfectly. (I complained they were big, and he said, "I'll wear 'em." I was like, "But they're lacy. And bright. And kind of hideous." And he says, "So? I like 'em." Alrighty then; I guess seeing as we've firmly established that the man cares nothing of what other people say about his socks, I'll go with it.)

I finished that sock while on the way home from Sunday Brunch in Daytona for my friend David's birthday (that's him crouching there.) This place, Aunt Catfish's, is fantastic (once you find it, grrr) and it's such fun to get there at about 10:45, have breakfast, sit around for an hour or more, then go back to the buffet for lunch. (Yeah, I'm a big ol' pig.) And where else can you stuff yourself silly and then have your picture taken on a pier with a big plastic fish? Ah, good times. (Also pictured: a bit of productivity in the form of a haircut and colour for me - yay, the grey was starting to rear its ugly head.)

Plus, there was this bird. I'm sure he was just drying off...but he was just sitting there like this for the whole ten minutes we were out there, and I really wanted him to say in a deep booming voice, "BEHOLD MY AWESOME POWER!!" but unfortunately my life is not a cartoon. If it was, though, he TOTALLY would have said that.

In other news of busy-ness, Travis has been doing this. There was a leaky pipe he wanted to fix...and I guess it's a good thing because that led to him discovering this:

This piece of once-whole wood that doesn't look so whole anymore? There were bugs. There were phone calls, there were visits, there were contracts, and there will be a big ol' tent thrown over our house in a while - but hey, then we will definitely be wood-pest free! Yay! (Always look on the bright side...) So yeah, that was the glitch in our weekend. Not an expense we were counting on, but the weekend overall came out on top nonetheless! (But we sure would love some folks buying up some yarn, know what I'm sayin'?) ;-)